{"id":7981,"date":"2022-07-30T06:34:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-30T06:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7981"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","slug":"unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7981","title":{"rendered":"UNITY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yesterday we joined a couple thousand people late for the dolphin show at one of the outdoor auditoriums at Sea World in Orlando, Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A man came out to hype up the crowd before the dolphins&#8217; appearance. He would play bits of songs from the 70s and 80s through the loud speakers and then encourage us to continue the lyrics whenever he cut the volume at key moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t remember the last time I heard so many voices united so joyfully. From Sweet Caroline&#8221; to &#8220;Love Shack&#8221; to &#8220;We will Rock You&#8221;, it felt like everyone knew every line.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Three thoughts struck me:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1.\u00a0Singing together is a powerful unifying force.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2. It was wonderful to see there are still some things that unite us as Americans, even if it is only belting out &#8220;Sweet Caroline &#8230; bum, bum, bum &#8230; Good times never seemed so good!&#8221;<br>\u00a0<br>3. By turning worship into a concert, the modern church has lost the dynamic of this vocal unification of the gathered people of God.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And we aren&#8217;t even aware of the loss because we decided the performance on stage was the most important part of singing praise.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday we joined a couple thousand people late for the dolphin show at one of the outdoor auditoriums at Sea World in Orlando, Florida.\u00a0 A man came out to hype up the crowd before the dolphins&#8217; appearance. He would play bits of songs from the 70s and 80s through the loud speakers and then encourage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7982,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7981\/revisions\/7982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}